I am curious about islam

[Hegel]

The result: Islam ... is clearly the stupidest of all great world religions.

I personally think Scientology beats it.

Christianity rivals Islam with its "trinity" and concepts of a god who sacrifices himself to himself to convince himself to forgive us all and change a rule he made in the first place.

...but then again, this is a debate about which pile of crap smells the worst.

Well, I have to say I disagree with you on Christianity and Trinity. Trinity is really a philosophical doctrine taken from Neo-Platonism; you don't find the notion in Gospels as explicitly stated. And this philosophical dimension is one thing that makes, in my opinion, Christianity superior to Islam. Have thought about this: Christianity developed the philosophical synthesis' of St. Thomas, etc, but Islam banned philosophy and science! In other words, Christianity allowed the idea that world can be understood rationally, as it is created by "the Grand Architect", where Islam stated that one should simply stick to what is written in the Quran and all efforts to "penetrate the mind of God" are heretical. Another thing is the story, which I think you misinterpret. Taken as a piece of literature, as an allegory it makes sense.

---

Its probably them killing a non believer("kafir") or punishing a woman for doing something that they don't like .
But the amount of blood and the anger in their faces is what drove my curiosity to know about what happened .

I think that particular image comes from a yearly ceremony within the Shiite community where they cut themselves to celebrate the martyring? of someone or another.

Can a resident Muslim please correct me if I'm wrong?

I am not a Muslim, but I can tell that you are right. That ritual is practiced only by certain branch of Shiite Muslims.